We just completed our second set of mock exams for Y11 before the February half-term and after analysing results, most students missed the next grade up just for two or three marks. This shows me that the next three of months will be key for my classes. How to maximise our time with our Y11 classes from now up to their exams to improve grades a grade or more? I wrote a post on this topic in 2021 and my approach has not changed much!
This is my straight-forward line of action, which I have followed for many years, to make sure that students improve their Mock results for at least one grade. In fact, although a SOS guideline, these are strategies we apply to all our KS4 lessons, including the new GCSE course.
Maximising Listening skills
This is the skill our students tended to underperform in the trial and in the real GCSE exams, the wrongly called the passive skill! Nevertheless, listening is the foundation of the learning journey to achieve fluency and get students using the language. In our department we believe so strongly in the fundamental need to develop listening skills, linked to phonics, that we start tackling this skill at KS3 with a dedicated lesson every two weeks where students carry out listening personalised tasks, independently, with their headphones, in Google Classroom. I wrote extensively about listening at KS3, how to exploit textbook audio material and how to create a virtual language lab in this blog.
Focussing on GCSE, these are the strategies we adopt as from Y10:
- We dedicate a lesson every two weeks, exclusively, to practise listening skills. We have three lessons per week so, one of those 6 lessons, in a fortnight, is exclusively a listening lesson. During that lesson, we prepare listening material + transcripts, based on the topics we teach in the curriculum and students carry the activities individually with their headphones.
- During the first lessons we do independent listening practice, we record ourselves and create classic activities such as "dictation with gaps" "putting sentences into order" "fill in the gaps without gaps" or "finishing the sentence", using 100% vocabulary that we have covered in lessons, so it is 95% understandable material, this is an example of a Y10 Independently Listening session. The idea is to treat listening for learning and retrieve vocab in a listening format.
- As we carry out these lessons, and definitely at this stage of the GCSE course in Y11, we use mainly past paper listening questions, for that use Exampro activities for AQA. Examwizard is the equivalent for Edexcel Pearson. We choose tasks, on a given theme/topic, so we concentrate on specific vocabulary at a time. When we create the tasks using Exampro, we use a variety of questions: Foundation, Overlapping and Higher. Students work with at their own pace individually, using headphones, so we also develop independent learning skills: Students learn how to revise for the listening exam, once they are at home.
- Use the transcripts wisely. Share them, with your students, at all times, but especially when carrying out exam style questions. We always include the transcripts and the mark schemes. Remember this is listening for learning not testing! Use the transcripts to create pre-listening tasks, so there is an opportunity to look up vocabulary and do translation activities. Ideally, this can be done in previous lessons, or as a homework task. During our listening independent lesson, students always listen to the audio while reading the transcript and then complete the task. Students work at their own pace and some may do only 2/3 tasks this way. On a second listening lesson, they can attempt some of the same tasks, again, interleaved with previous topic tasks, without using the transcript, although this is always accessible to them. This is a powerful listening technique: Listening while reading the transcript. This practice has become more valuable now with the new GCSE and the reading aloud task, as this will provide excellent modelling practice for students for the reading aloud task, as well as developing their phonological recognition and develop listening processing skills.
- At some point in the process, we also carry out an exam style question together: we look at the transcript first and highlight key vocabulary. We read the exam question and make sure we understand it, emphasising key words which may act as distractors in the exam: a sentence may start with something someone likes but later will say what they love, which is what is needed for the actual task. We pay attention to key, high frequency words that can be key for the listening exam, especially negatives and superlatives and opinion key words. We analyse why a particular question is challenging and what is key in the transcript to make it accessible: developing metacognitive skills as we go through the thinking process of tackling a listening exam question.
- We look up random vocabulary in transcripts and reading past papers: vocabulary that has appeared in previous years and we know we have not taught explicitly, and we create Quizlet courses. This is one of mine, I have two of these courses. Students learn this vocabulary over several homework tasks. It is amazing to see how some of the most random vocabulary keeps appearing in exams, year after year like: falta, ancianos, sopa de marisco, productos lácteos or me enteré/me decepcionó/ me di cuenta in AQA!
- Students must add, any unknown vocabulary appearing in the transcript to their own random Quizlet courses: the more vocabulary they know, the better they will be at recognising it in a listening but also a reading task!
Maximising Reading Skills
Students tend to do better in this skill. Learning high frequency words and random general vocabulary, as done per listening, and all topic vocabulary is key for success!
I normally tackle this skill via homework tasks, as I personally like using lesson time for oral/listening activities mainly. The use of Exampro or Examwizard can prove invaluable here too!
The key for success for this skill is to treat it, like the listening component, as an opportunity to learn the language! So, students are encouraged to add any unknown vocabulary to their Random Vocabulary Quizlet, when carrying out the activities. In fact doing this is part of the homework task!
It is important that students don't see this practice as a test/assessment but as a learning opportunity! Going through the reading tasks/answers with students and stop, to model, as a whole class, the thinking process to tackle those tricky questions, it is vital and super important.
Don't just ask students to complete a task: reflect on the process of how students came to a particular answer and why it was not another. The exam is full of "catchy" bits, so training students to recognise these and look up for intensifiers, synonyms, negative words etc.. in a text are crucial skills!
Tackling the Writing paper
To get better at this, students need models of what a good writing task looks like and must know the structures/vocabulary/grammar extremely well! This is why using Sentence Builders throughout the GCSE course, not just at KS3, is so important: as these provide a wonderful framework to work with and manipulate the language as needed.
All our Sentence Builders for GCSE can be found here . Of course, interleaving, retrieval practice and carrying out key activities throughout the GCSE course to help students learn these Sentence Builders and transfer them to their Long Term Memory, are essential. To get ideas on Writing Tasks in general, as from KS3, visit this blogpost.
- Present students with a model of a writing task. This is my model video on how to tackle the 150 word question in AQA, modelling with students they thinking process they have to through when tackling a writing task question/bullet points.
- We also dedicate a lesson every two weeks, to carry out a timed writing task in Y11, as we do with listening as from Y10. For the tasks, again, we use Exampro past paper questions. We always prepare two tasks: one aimed at Foundation level, including Description of a photocard, 40 words task a d 90 word task, and another at Higher level, 90 word task and 150 word task. Every two weeks, students for homework, prepare one of the tasks (Foundation or Higher), taking into account the 5 Magic Powers.
- To be successful in the previous task and to do also really well in the oral exam, especially the General Conversation, students need to fulfil certain criteria. This is what I call the 5 Magical Powers:
- Use of different tenses (at least three)
- Giving opinions
- Giving Reasons
- Talking about someone else, in its simple form, the use of reported speech mi madre/amigo dice/dijo que..
- High Impact expressions
We embed these Magical Powers in our SoW as from Y7! In fact our mark scheme at KS3 is based on how well these powers have been achieved in a written/oral task. Click here for a Blogpost on this. Looking at the new GCSE, still these criteria are present so it makes sense to get students familiar with them as from Y7! The idea is that when preparing their writing task for a timed writing lesson, they must make reference to these powers.To help students to use the Magical Powers, we created the following document, with examples of the Powers to practise as from Y10. This document has been printed in A3, laminated and displayed in the students' desk. Click here for a copy. Students also have their own laminated copy for their bedrooms!I have talked extensively about the Powers before, but one of the elements I developed recently is the use of LINKS or NUGGETS.What are the NUGGETS?My Y11 students were really struggling with verb endings so I thought of using LINKS or NUGGETS, basically expressions acting as shortcuts, which can be used for different tenses, without having to conjugate a verb. I still expect most of my students to use verb endings but, if they struggle, in a moment of panic, the nuggets work wonders. Similarly, those students who can conjugate well and easily can alternate traditional conjugation with the NUGGETS, as these are also examples of High Impact expressions (a Magical Power), widening their use of vocabulary!
How do they work? If students do not remember the endings for the present tense, especially for irregular verbs, they may use Suelo/Suele/ Me gusta/ Podemos/Se puede. In the Preterite, Decidí/empecé a, in the Imperfect, Solía, in the future Voy a and in the Conditional Me gustaría. The NUGGETS or LINKS are very popular because once you use them, you just need to use the Infinitive after them!!They also help weaker students to understand that an infinitive can never be used without the support of a NUGGET or LINK. When we practise sentences, for example, we always do it using a verb ending but also a LINK/NUGGET if it is possible. This has helped my students a LOT to avoid grammatical mistakes regarding verb endings.The nuggets or links work so well that these are introduced as from KS3, so they become a second nature for students when they reach KS4.
- We retrieve, constantly in lessons, the 5 Magic Powers that students need, to get the highest grades in the writing and oral papers.
- During lesson time, we carry out Translation activities in a game environment using MWBs.
Maximising Speaking skills
- We try to spend as much lesson time as possible on oral skills and scaffolding activities leading to fluency. This is the only skill which is very difficult for students to master on their own! Similarly, it is the skill that will motivate them the most to study a language at GCSE and beyond!!! If they feel they cannot speak, they will give up on the subject. For that, you can use, some of the activities proposed on this blog, preferably from KS3.
- Using the Oral Booklet, model and practise, first in writing using MWBs, the Roleplay and Photocards. In Y11, these present great starter activities for a lesson! After practising as a whole class with MWBs, Students can practise the tasks, easily, with their partners as the oral booklet has on one side the student card and on the other the teacher's version.
- To practise the General Conversation part of the exam, 50% of the whole speaking mark, we give them model questions which students can start preparing in flashcards, little by little as from Y10, as the course progresses. I make it clear they cannot learn by heart all these questions! but having them in writing, gives them some confidence for their own revision on what a good model answer looks like! We are also continuing with this practice with the current Y10 cohort in preparation for the new GCSE. On this occasion, the model questions will be in preparation for the conversation to take place after talking about two photocards in the last part of the oral paper and the questions that will be asked after the reading aloud task (AQA)
Make the link between the General Conversation in the Speaking exam and the Writing exam
We help students practise these questions via home work tasks and we connect the oral to the writing: for example, we link the next timed writing, as explained above, to the same theme/topic covered in a previous oral homework task. There’s a clear link between both exams and students need to understand such link!
Students must realise that by revising potential oral questions for the general conversation they are, in fact, learning potential content for the writing tasks. Understanding this link breaks down the gigantic task of tackling four different exams for GCSE. Such concept is also reinforced by using multi skilled activities and the same type of tasks to practise different skills, for example Battleships for listening, oral and writing. Students must understand that all skills are interwoven and must be practised interlinked with each other. Using our 5 Magic Powers has certainly helped us with this link, as the powers are valid for both productive skills.
During lessons, dedicate time to practise the general conversation questions in a game format. This is an example with Flippity: students click on the randomiser, play, Piedra, Papel, Tijera and must answer a question as it spins. To make the task more challenging, ask them to include a high impact expression, from the second column, in their answer. We tend to do this in writing with MWBs too. It works wonders as it reinforces the link between the speaking and writing paper and gives confidence to students before tackling purely oral tasks.
We dedicate our lessons two weeks leading to the Mock and real MFL orals to just to practise oral skills.
As with writing, we retrieve, during our lessons, key verbs in different tenses and high impact expressions: basically our 5 Magic Powers.
